Ethnicity in photography -- does it matter?

[Alexandra]

From today's NY Times:

Behind a Century of Photos, Was There a Jewish Eye?

TO be a great photographer, Garry Winogrand liked to claim during the 1970's, it was first of all necessary to be Jewish. The best ones, in his opinion ? past and present, himself included, naturally ? shared this birthright. Jewish photographers by his definition were nervy, ironic, disruptive of artistic norms and proud outsiders. Eugène Atget, he happily argued (on no genealogical grounds), must have been Jewish because his photographs of French life on the tattered fringes seemed so Jewish in spirit.